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Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses Jewish animal ethics, describing a central concept, tza'ar ba'alei hayyim, the ban on causing undue pain to animals, and the varying justifications for that ban. Some of these justifications focus on how compassion for animals will benefit human beings, including human moral character, and others assert the inherent value of animals in and of themselves. The chapter also discusses how the prohibition against causing animals pain is balanced in Jewish sources by human need, a balance that affects not only our use of animals but also Jewish rules regarding eating their flesh, with a persistent minority strain which urges vegetarianism. It then turns to two responsibilities that humans have to animals according to the Jewish tradition—to preserve compassion toward them and to guard them from abuse produced by economic motives. In general, Jews are required to provide animals with both a good life and a good death; this goes against many of the methods used in modern factory farming.

Aaron S. Gross is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. He holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in religious studies with a specialization in modern Judaism from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gross has lectured at academic conferences and universities around the world on issues related to animals and religion, and food and religion. He co-chairs the American Academy of Religion Consultation on Animals and Religion, serves on the board of the Society of Jewish Ethics, and is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit Farm Forward. Gross collaborated with novelist Jonathan Safran Foer on Foer’s international bestseller, Eating Animals (2009). His publications have appeared in The Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal, The Encyclopedia of Film and Religion, The Huffington Post, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, and Tikkun Magazine. Gross’s forthcoming co-edited volume, Animal Others and the Human Imagination, is due out in Spring 2012.

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